


On the Far Side

by dumplin



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, M/M, Magical Realism, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Slow Burn, Teenage Rebellion, The Mortifying Ordeal of Being Known, offscreen death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 05:34:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29005377
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dumplin/pseuds/dumplin
Summary: It starts with a park and a gazebo. It starts and it shouldn't work and they don't know that yet. It starts and it's beautiful and the flowers weep for it.Alternatively, sad boys make some friends.
Relationships: Bang Chan/Lee Felix
Kudos: 15





	1. The Far Side Part 1

Floating. 

Chan was good at floating. You take a step in the morning and a step in the evening and in between are all the things that happen in a day. You smile blankly at red, angry faces and keep your voice even no matter what they say, something that became so much easier once you found the tap to turn yourself off each morning. He was still figuring out how to keep that tap closed all the time, but for now, it was okay to feel nothing but detached amusement as another customer yells at him for, apparently, getting their order wrong. 

He might have gotten their order wrong. He didn’t know. He thought there was a new trainee at the shop, bumbling and fumbling, but that was all background noise. Everything was background noise when you spent all day staring at the tap, willing it to stay shut. Sometimes people talked to him outside of coffee orders. He always felt a bit disorientated when that happened. Blurry faces start to take form, forming curved eyebrows and dimples and all the things that make up an individual. 

It happened a lot in the beginning, but luckily people seemed to realise Chan wasn’t really there, so it happened less and less. 

Luckily.

When you floated, days and seasons were a vague suggestion, only there to keep your life from shaking completely out of the mold. It was a slight shock, therefore, to walk out of work one day and feel cold rain drip into the collar of his shirt, realising he hadn’t thought to bring an umbrella. He wasn’t sure he had an umbrella. 

He’d worked the morning shift, however, which meant it was Wednesday, which meant the shops were open, which meant he could buy an umbrella, which meant he could still go to the park. 

He didn’t know if the park had a name. He didn’t know how long the park had been there. If he talked to anyone, he might have asked if they had ever been there, because Chan had lived in that neighbourhood for ten years and he couldn’t remember the park ever being there. If he talked to anyone, he might have talked about how, in the early days, before he really got the hang off floating, he’d stumbled on what seemed like an oasis at the time, a small, rock-lined path leading into the depths of a quiet, wooded area. 

He might have talked about walking past wooden seats and informational boards, aware that this was some sort of park, but unaware of how it had come to be. He might have talked about finding another, smaller path, less clearly defined, seeming almost abandoned, and how he’d followed it to a small clearing, in the middle of which sat a circular gazebo, quiet, always quiet, feeling like a ‘welcome home’ in a world that had rapidly become far from the known entity Chan had lived in all his life. 

He didn’t talk to anyone, however, so since the day five months ago when he had first found the park and the gazebo, it had been  _ his _ , and it had been  _ quiet _ , and there had never been any sign of another human being in the park. 

The only umbrellas left in the convenience store were small, cartoon covered kids umbrellas and bright pink polka-dot covered ones. Chan picked up the polka-dot umbrella without blinking. 

It always got quiet near the park, as if the place itself let out a quiet aura. On a rainy day, the first there had been since Chan had found the park, the silence was even more pronounced and, for the first time in a week, the fog in Chan’s head lifted enough for him to see the drippy, bright green leaves, to hear the quiet pitter-patter of the raindrops around him. 

The tap loosened, just slightly, and Chan took in a deep breath, drawing it all the way into his stomach, feeling his chest expand further than felt possible with the rich, wet air. The entrance to the park was quiet and empty, as always, and Chan hopped from stone to stone that layered the path. The small, side path leading off to the gazebo was even harder to find than usual, and Chan walked past it twice before his eyes caught on the part in the foliage.

He drew in another deep breath, pressed his arm tightly against the bulge his worn notebook made against his side, and set off down the path. Just before opening up to the small clearing with the gazebo, the path narrowed down and seemed to lead into a wall of azalea’s. The first time Chan had pushed his way through them, he’d thought he was going completely off the path, so thickly was it packed. Luckily, he hadn’t cared then, and he knew better now. 

You closed your umbrella, accepted the rain falling on you with a tired sigh, and pushed through the flowers, shaking your head on the other side to dislodge any travellers that might have tried to hitch a ride. And then you looked up, and the gazebo was…

Chan blinked. The gazebo was always, always empty, and open, and quiet, and there was never, ever, any sign of another human being even existing in the world. Was always. Always had been. Was like that all the days before this one. 

The gazebo was still quiet. There was no one in the gazebo. There  _ was _ a tattered, discarded backpack, half zipped up, textbooks and notebooks peeking out over the edge. There was what looked like a sketchbook left open on the concrete middle table, pencil discarded at the side. A school jacket was folded messily over a seat, and scuffed dress shoes and socks pushed under the table. 

There was no one in the gazebo, but it was so clearly waiting for someone, so clearly the haven of someone else, that something in Chan locked up almost viciously, and the fog descended with a rapidity that left him reeling. 

He didn’t think he stayed to find out who had found his-- no, not his,  _ the _ \-- gazebo. He wasn’t sure, because the next time Chan blinked into semi-awareness he was jiggling the handle of his shitty apartment to make sure it had locked behind him. The building was old enough and run down enough that they hadn’t upgraded to electronic locks yet. It was close to the coffee shop, however, and the owners had known his family, so they’d offered him the place at a discounted price. 

He kicked off his shoes at the entrance, stepping into the apartment with damp socks. He still had the umbrella, clutched tightly in one hand and dripping, joining his old one next to the door, but whether he’d remembered to use it on his way home was anyone’s guess. Chan shook his head and winced at the cold droplets that flew from him. His money would be on no. 

The tap was straining. 

Chan took a deep breath. Another, trying to fill his lungs to the brim. His clothes ranged from damp to outright soaked, so it made sense to strip down to his boxers, flinging the rest into the overflowing laundry basket. He should do some laundry. Tomorrow. He had the evening shift. He could do it tomorrow. 

The tap was starting to drip.

There was still some leftover rice from breakfast that morning in the rice cooker, and Chan considered heating it up for perhaps five seconds before shrugging and scraping the last of the cold, congealed rice from the rice cooker, standing right there at the kitchen counter, shoving it in his mouth as a late lunch. 

He glanced at his phone, the cracked screen flickering briefly with his touch before fading out again. Five pm. Very late lunch. 

The tap stayed closed long enough for him to clean his bowl and the rice cooker. It stayed close long enough for him to take a shower and change into more comfortable clothes. It was almost open when Chan plugged in his phone to charge, but Chan was already in bed at that point, so it didn’t matter. 

Chan released the tap with a punched out sigh, and laid back. 

//

The best thing about shifts that didn’t start at six thirty in the morning, was that Chan didn’t need to close the tap all the way all at once. 

While he was washing the dishes and cooking breakfast, he could start mopping up the mess an overflowing tap inevitably made. While making a grocery list for the week, he could start to tighten all the pieces that had shaken loose over the night. Finally, picking up the long-neglected laundry basket, taking the narrow stairs down to the basement laundry room, he could slowly, gently, start to close the tap. 

By the time he had closed the tap all the way and all his chores were out of the way, there was maybe an hour, maybe an hour and a half left until his shift started, and he could start getting dressed. Thankfully, the clanky, groaning, ancient radiator in his apartment still worked, so his shoes, which he’d placed on top of it the night before to dry, didn’t chafe wetly at his heels. 

If there was still time left after all of that before his shift, he’d pop into the grocery store and get all the dry goods he needed that would last through his shift. It was a routine, almost a good one, Chan thought, and it kept the fog happy and quiet when he walked into work. He’d remembered an umbrella today, although the sunny, blue sky belied the rain that had fallen from it the day before. 

He was walking through the door, head down, the plastic of the grocery bag digging into his fingers in an almost pleasant, grounding pull, when someone bumped into him from behind. Chan lurched forward and saw his phone flying from his hand with an almost detached horror. The phone was already on its last breath, the battery shoddy at best and the screen one hard tap away from shattering, so when it fell on the ground and separated into three pieces, the screen shattering on impact, Chan resigned himself to the fact that, for the moment at least, he did not have a phone.

There was a gasp behind him and an anxious voice immediately started to chatter away in his ears. Chan ignored the person for a moment, bending down to pick up the bigger pieces of his phone before pausing to stare at the splintered pieces of glass littering the floor. With a sigh, he shoved the bigger pieces of glass into the plastic bag and reached down to start scraping the glass pieces together with his hands. 

“No!”

The voice broke through the fog in Chan’s head like a sudden streak of sunlight, as did the hand that clamped down on his forearm, holding him back. Chan blinked down at the tanned hand tightly gripping at him, feeling slow and stupid as the hand shook him a little bit and the voice continued to, apparently, berate him. 

“--sorry, but you can’t just try and scoop up the pieces with your bare hands what if you--”

Chan finally managed to lift himself out of the fog enough to focus his eyes on the person now crouching next to him. The person, boy’s, really, eyes were wide, worried, and Chan realised with a vague sense of recognition that this was the new hire that had started the previous day. He was still talking, face pinched and worried, eyes wide wide wide  _ wide _ \--

“Yah, Jeongin, leave him alone, you’re making him nervous.”

The voice that stopped the boy’s babbling was a dry, amused one that Chan vaguely recognised as one of his coworkers. There was shuffling behind him, and Chan could almost feel the heat of the other’s palm hovering above his shoulder before he seemed to change his mind, pulling the boy, Jeongin, away and up instead. Chan followed his progression and got a glimpse of a pointed chin and strong, intense eyes before he realised he was seeing too much. He still had eight hours left in his shift. He couldn’t start seeing things  _ now _ . He averted his eyes quickly and stood up, willing the fog back into his brain, into his eyes, even as he dusted his hands on his pants and mumbled about getting a dustpan. 

He heard their voices drone on behind him, but tried not to hear what they were saying, tried not to let the words ring with meaning in his head. He’d learned a while ago that this was the safest, easiest way to keep the tap closed and he was not in the mood to test it. 

After cleaning the glass shards, tangentially aware of Jeongin hovering around him, Chan continued with his shift as normal. Knowing the boy’s name was a bother, but Chan had full faith he’d forget it again in no time. After all, everyone at the shop had been introduced to him when he started working there and he’d still forgotten theirs in less than a month. It’d be fine. 

He had a few regulars, tired, worn-down people who actually appreciated the way he didn’t try and make small-talk with them, who liked that he rarely, if ever, had a smile to share. That had been a problem, at first, resulting in some stern talking to’s with his manager, but they’d settled into a routine soon enough. Chan did just enough to keep from being accused of being outright hostile, and his manager could keep giving him the shifts no one else wanted. 

The day continued as normal, except for the way Jeongin  _ kept _ hovering around him. He was next to Chan when he was working the till, near his elbow while he worked the espresso machine, and close behind him when he went to fetch the mop to mop up a spill. Chan tried his best to ignore the kid, tried his best to make him fade into the background, but his eyes were so  _ big _ and they seemed to be so  _ fixed _ on him. When Chan’s elbow caught Jeongin in the ribs as he stepped away from the counter to grab more carton folds, Chan couldn’t stop the hiss that escaped him. 

Jeongin flinched visibly, in addition to the quiet grunt he’d let out when Chan’s elbow hit him and with a quiet sigh, Chan resigned himself to being uncomfortably  _ aware _ for the last few hours of his shift. 

“Ah, sorry,” Chan mumbled, automatically reaching out a hand before remembering himself. 

“No, no, don’t worry about it!” The kid was smiling. Chan legitimately could not remember the last time someone had smiled  _ at _ him. “I shouldn’t have been standing so close behind you.” Jeongin stopped talking and seemed to be waiting for… something. 

Chan had no idea what that expectation entailed. He nodded. Shrugged. Tried to move past Jeongin. 

“Wait!” His arm was being gripped again. Turning to face Jeongin presented Chan with those big, big eyes again, and god, this kid had to learn how to  _ not _ wear every emotion he’s ever felt ever on his face. “Wait,” he said again.

Chan grimaced slightly and shook his arm loose, trying not to care when Jeongin’s smile slipped from his face. It was better the kid found out now that Chan wasn’t someone he could be friends with. Or would want to be friends with. 

“What?”

“Uh, I just,” Jeongin scratched at his elbow, and Chan noticed several red, scabbed over marks around the protruding joint. “I just wanted to say sorry, again, for your phone?” Chan nodded slowly. It had sounded like a question, but the answer eluded him. “Yeah and uh, and offer to pay for it. For repairs or a, a new one.”

His voice faltered at the end, whether at the lack of expression on Chan’s face or the realisation of how large a sum a new phone might come down to. Chan gave him a quick once over, taking in details that he hadn’t bothered to pick up before. Worn out but good quality shoes, faded jeans, wrinkled but clean shirt. Telltale dark circles around the eyes. A student, obviously, and Chan wasn’t about to take money from the kid, or his parents.

“It’s fine, don’t worry about it.” Chan cleared his throat. He spoke to customers, of course he did, but those were very simple, straightforward, scripted responses. He wasn’t used to speaking outside his routine. Nevermind his voice, but his brain, his social skills, felt out of use. “I’m not gonna make you or your parents pay for a new phone. You’re obviously a student, so don’t worry about it.” The kid made a dissenting noise and opened his mouth as if to protest, so Chan cut him a sharp look and said, “Seriously, don’t. It was an accident, it’s fine.”

An incredulous sounding laugh rang out behind Jeongin, and Chan looked up to see that same coworker from earlier, the one that had pulled Jeongin away from him, looking at them with his arms crossed and smile wide. 

“Well,  _ damn _ Jeongin, you got him to say more in one day then we’ve been able to get out of him in one  _ month _ .” He laughed again, though his eyes were wary as they watched Chan. Chan couldn’t figure out why until he realised he was still glaring, and he deliberately relaxed his face. He’d been told before that he looked quite frightening when angry. 

The tightness around his coworker’s eyes vanished with his scowl, and the guy sauntered forward to swing his arm around Jeongin’s shoulders, pulling him back towards the guy. It was a friendly gesture, made with all the pretenses of good humour and teasing the kid, complete with mussing his hair, but Chan couldn’t help but feel that widening of the space between them was deliberate. 

Which probably wasn’t true, and even if it was, shouldn’t have any bearing on Chan’s feelings. He’d been working there for months, and yet had made no attempt to befriend or get to know his coworkers, or even learn their names. He could hardly blame them for being wary of him. Chan tightened his jaw and turned away, intending to go and help the customer tapping her foot and pointedly looking at her watch. They’d been talking for too long. 

“Still,” the voice of his coworker piped up again, “you should at least offer to buy him dinner, or something. Make up for your little accident, huh?”

He was ostensibly talking to the boy, but Chan didn’t stay to hear his answer. He’d already made it clear that he didn’t want or need any reparations, and the quicker he removed himself from any situation that required his active participation, the better. The rest of the day passed incident free, apart from the usual snobby, difficult customers that always made their way to any open coffee shop right when they were about to close. By the time all the lurkers had been herded out of the shop, the counters had been cleaned, the sugars restacked and the floor mopped, it was nine-thirty, and Chan was just about ready to choke from the strain keeping it all together was taking. 

There were small, dilapidated lockers in the backroom for the employees to store their belongings, and Chan always entered the room with his eyes on the floor, the better to avoid everyone, which was probably why he didn’t immediately register the figure at his locker, or the silence that seemed to have invaded the room along with his presence. 

He only noticed when he didn’t have to weave and bob his way through the bodies packed in the back, and only then because a quiet gasp allerted him to the fact that something was not quite right. It took a second for him to realise he had to lift his head, that the situation he found himself in required him to focus his eyes, but once he did, blinking rapidly, it felt a cold, invading wind was blowing in his head. Unpleasant, nipping and catching at all his rough edges, and, as wind is wont to do, blowing all the fog he had so painstakingly scraped together away. 

The kid, the klutz,  _ Jeongin _ , was standing in front of Chan’s locker. Chan’s  _ open _ locker. His open locker, which, of course, had exploded outwards, because you had to jiggle it a certain way and then open it carefully, since it was  _ old _ , and evicted all its occupants at a moment’s notice if you weren’t careful. The rice, flour, and various other bits and bobs Chan had picked up from the store littered the floor, some packages broken open, others miraculously still whole. The shirt he had been planning to replace his ugly work shirt with was hanging of a serrated edge, a tear forming at the collar where it had caught. 

That wasn’t the worst of it, however. That wasn’t what caused the wind and the cold and the horrid, horrid,  _ awful _ clearheadedness. It was the notebook that had joined the groceries on the floor. The notebook, which had already been fraying at the corners, had landed on its spine, cracking and coughing a good half of the pages that were filled with Chan’s tight scribble. 

Jeongin had a horrified look on his face, an envelope creased to all shit in his spasming hand. Chan could just about make out the characters for his name between the gaps of his fingers. 

This was all tangential, incidental information however. The larger part of Chan was much more preoccupied with falling to his knees and trying his best to collect all his pages as fast as possible. He had to get them back in the book, the notebook, the one that--

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean--,” a cut off, choked sound, as if the kid was crying, and then he started up again. “I just wanted to give you this, I really didn’t mean for all this to happen.”

The envelope was shoved in front of Chan’s face as he was trying to shove all the pages in the notebook with shaking hands, because the tap hadn’t just been jostled loose, hadn’t just been opened all the way, no. It had been blasted off, kicked off it’s already shaky pipes, and the plumbing was  _ visible _ , hanging out the wall, and Chan  _ hated _ the way it looked. 

Chan took a breath. Another, and another. Blinked quickly, and didn’t raise his head, because the tap was gone, and he could already feel the wetness on his cheeks. “I  _ told _ you, I don’t  _ need _ anything.”

He grabbed the notebook, thankfully with all the pages inside now, though all out of order and he would have to sort it out and and-- 

He left the back room with the notebook, his apartment keys, and nothing else. He didn’t care about the shirt, or the groceries, and he only noticed when he was undressing to take a shower, shivering uncontrollably, that he had forgotten to leave his apron at the shop. His numb fingers couldn’t figure out the knot, couldn’t do much more than loosen it enough for him to wiggle out of. 

He laid that night, curled into a ball, notebook pressed to his chest, too many blankets piled on top of him, and tried to gather enough of himself to stuff the plumbing back into the wall, to get the tap installed again.

//

Chan didn’t so much wake up as slowly become aware of his surroundings again, this time bathed in a dreary, muted light, the sound of dripping water and that one outlet pipe that always starts groaning in heavy water loud in the otherwise silent apartment. Chan knew it was past his usual waking time from the lack of noise. Early in the morning there was always noise; the trucks passing by under his window, making their early morning deliveries, loud banging from upstairs as his neighbour did whatever it was they did each morning. 

All of that was gone now, replaced with the swishing noise cars made as they drove through puddles and a soft, rhythmic, almost soothing thud from upstairs that almost lulled him into an actual sleep. That was, before he moved and became aware of the hard object wedged into his chest.

His notebook. 

The notebook that had fallen and laid all of himself bare for all his coworkers to see the previous day, if they had cared to look. Hopefully they hadn’t. Hopefully, Chan had been quick enough to prevent anyone seeing anything. Hopefully they were respectful enough to not  _ pry _ , to not keep  _ insisting _ and  _ pushing _ like that kid, that, that  _ Jeongin _ and--

Loud knocking distracted him from his spiralling thoughts, and Chan spent about half a second trying to figure out who would be knocking on  _ his  _ door, of all places, before the knock sounded again, harder, and Chan decided it would be easier to get up and see what was going on than try and figure out who had remembered he existed. 

Opening the door revealed a tight-faced man, various spray bottles and wipes secured around his waist, a large, vacuum-like machine shoved uncomfortably under his arm which probably accounted for about half of the urgency with which he was knocking. Chan shifted from foot to foot, uncomfortably aware of the worn out pair of pajamas he was wearing, perfectly serviceable but definitely not the most presentable clothes, and personally offending to the man if the way he was eyeing them was any indication. 

“Can--,” Chan’s voice came out rough, and he cleared his throat, attempting to wipe surreptitiously at his eyes to remove any telltale signs of crying or sleep. “Can I help you?”

“Uh, yeah, your landlady, I think, she hired me to do a deep clean of your apartment.” Chan blinked at the man. The man grimaced and shifted, dropping the machine on the ground for a moment and rubbing at his hip. “She also assured me the uh, resident, which I’m assuming is you, wouldn’t be here. Our company prefers not to have residents in the house being cleaned, for safety purposes.”

Chan’s landlady? 

“The uh, Kims, Mrs. Kim said I wouldn’t be here?”

There was an audible clicking sound as the man visibly clenched his jaw. “Yup. Listen, she said she would let you know, it’s not my fault if you somehow missed that message, but I was already paid in full, so if I could just get in there and do my job…?”

Chan was nodding before the man even finished speaking, already stepping to the side which the man took full advantage of, lugging his machine into the tiny front area, straightening up and holding his back as it audibly cracked. 

Chan bit his tongue on asking any questions about his well being, somehow feeling it wouldn’t be quite as appreciated as such questions normally would be, and after a quick detour to his bedroom and bathroom to change and freshen up, he left the man to it. It was only when he was standing on the sidewalk, pink polka dot umbrella he’d barely remembered to grab on his way out, that he realised he had no idea what to do. 

He’d just been booted out of his apartment by a man who may or may not be who he said he was, on his day off, no breakfast, and a broken phone with which he couldn’t even verify what the man was saying. It was probably true though. Mrs Kim had a tendency to hover. He’d only just convinced her he didn’t need daily meals a month ago. Hiring someone to deep clean his apartment because she was convinced a twenty two year old could not be trusted to take care of himself was not something he would put past her.

The tap wasn’t fixed, and the plumbing was still drying from where he’d hastily plastered it back in the wall last night, but it was raining, so no one would notice a bit of extra moisture. The world might be uncomfortably bright and  _ present _ today, but he didn’t have to go to work, he didn’t have to interact with people and he’d remembered to pack his notebook and pen in his quick dash out the apartment. He had options.

It was easy enough to keep his head down until he came to the, as usual, abandoned entrance to the park. It was quiet, and the rain muffled any outside noise that could have filtered in, and Chan didn’t realise he was carrying any anxiety about the gazebo until he’d struggled his way through the foliage and it was, again, as always, abandoned. 

No backpack, not sketchbook, no blazer. Just a grey, round gazebo with a table and looking like it hadn’t been bothered by the world around it for years and years and years. Chan knew that wasn’t true, had actual proof in what had happened that Wednesday that it wasn’t true, but that wasn’t important. Not right then. Not when he finally felt the pressure lift from his head. Not when he could finally lift his head and not see pity-filled gazes or be in fear of interrupting whispered conversations. 

Out here it was him, his notebook and pen, and the thoughts swirling and swirling in his head. Well, and the triangle gimbap he’d stopped in for at a convenience store. It’d been drilled into his brain from a very young age that three square meals a day was important and necessary for a human being to function, and it was a habit that he hadn’t made any effort to break, since he didn’t necessarily disagree with it. Though, ‘square’ and ‘meals’ may be a bit of an exaggeration for the food that Chan managed to eat, but the thought was there, anyway. 

It was easy to get absorbed in the unloading of the scribble of his head onto the paper, easy enough that it was with a shock at the grumble his stomach let out that Chan realised he was, indeed, hungry again. Not only that, but the sun had shifted from it’s early morning position to sit past noon. He didn’t know the time, courtesy of his broken phone, but he guessed it was near two, still raining quite heavily. He should probably pack up and get some lunch, at least. Or, maybe, the cleaner was all done at his apartment already. 

He had just decided to stay, just a bit more, when the sound of a foot landing on the concrete steps of the gazebo startled him and he looked up to see a wide-eyed boy staring at him. 

“Who are you?”

Chan spoke without thinking and, as such, his voice came out harsher than expected. He flinched at the sound of his own voice, but the boy merely blinked and tilted his head at Chan, wet strands of black hair clinging to his face.

“I’m, uh, Felix. Well, at least, that’s what everyone calls me. I didn’t think anyone else knew of this place.”

He spoke with an accent Chan couldn’t quite place, and the blazer identified him as the person who had been there two days ago. 

“Neither did I.”

Felix took half a step backwards, hesitated, then stepped forward again, a determined looking smile on his face. “Well, no reason we can’t share this place, is there? What’s your name?”

His smile was bright, sincere, if that word ever deserved to be used, and when he smiled his eyes turned up into smiling crescents as well. Chan shut his notebook and gripped it tight. “I don’t like people. I don’t like talking to people. This-- there wasn’t supposed to be anyone here.”

Felix’s smile faded, slightly, and his hands pulled at the straps of his backpack. “Well, I’m here now, and this  _ is _ a park so.”

Chan’s grip on his notebook tightened even further. The day was too bright, even with the rain and the gray skies. The smile on Felix’s face was brighter still, and, and the  _ tap wasn’t fixed yet _ and--

“Right, yes, you’re allowed to be here, I’m not--” It was fine while Chan was alone, it was fine while he didn’t have to exist as a  _ person _ , it was fine while all that existed were the plants and his notebook and the silence and the way his head spilled over but there was someone  _ else _ and-- “I’ll go it’s not, it’s fine.”

Before Felix had the chance to say anything, to interject, to make Chan aware of the fact that he was being  _ perceived _ , Chan had gathered up his things, ducked his head, and ran out into the rain, away from the park and the boy who, at least to him, had stolen it from him. 

It was only once he was halfway back to his apartment, bag clutched protectively in his arms, that he’d realised that he’d left his umbrella still standing neatly on the steps of the gazebo, and that cold, wet drops of rain were sliding their way beneath his collar, soaking him thoroughly.

Fantastic. 


	2. The Shore (Interlude)

Felix, or Lee Yongbok, as his mother insisted he had to go by now, didn’t like school. 

His father scoffed at him when he said this, rolling his eyes at his mother, as if to say, ‘what’s new?’ Felix was aware no high school student really  _ liked _ school, but he was sure he carried a special case of dislike on his side. Not only did he not like school, he didn’t like  _ Korean _ school. 

“You can’t say that, you know.  _ You’re _ Korean.” Jisung was biting at a half-eaten ice lolly as he talked, muffling his voice to an almost incoherent mumble that Felix one hundred percent would not have understood mere months ago. 

“Yeah,  _ culturally.  _ That doesn’t mean I  _ like _ that we’re supposed to stay at school until it’s literally dark outside.” Felix kicked half-heartedly at a loose rock. “Australian schools were fine. Perfectly reasonable hours. This is our last year before we have to be  _ adults _ , Jisung. Doesn’t it bother you that we’re seen as lazy and, and  _ delinquents _ if we don’t stay until nine pm at  _ least? _ ”

Jisung shrugged. “Not really.” Jisung had grown up in South Korea, unlike Felix, and, unlike Felix, didn’t carry an all-consuming grudge against the school system. He never objected, however, when Felix suggested sneaking away earlier than they were supposed to. “It’s just how it is, you know. You go to school, you study really,  _ really _ hard, and then you go work in a stuffy little cubicle until you die.” He grinned around the ice lolly at Felix, teeth stained a faded pink by the colourants in the frozen treat. “Easy.”

“Hm, yeah, sounds  _ awesome _ .” Felix smiled his biggest, fakest smile, fading into a more genuine one as Jisung snorted at him. 

Jisung, like a lot of their fellow students, was on a fast track to the local university. As he’d told Felix, he’d never aspired to much more than his father had, which was working for an insurance claims company, spending weekends with his family and working during the week. “‘There’s no place for dreams, Jisung. Money is important.’” Jisung had made his voice thick as he imitated his father, and he laughed afterwards, but Felix imagined he could see a longing in Jisung’s eyes that matched his own. 

“I just wish there was… more. I feel like I would die in an office job, y’know?”

Jisung laughed, sighed, and then nodded his head. Felix sighed back at him, and slung an arm around Jisung’s shoulder, continuing their ambling stroll down the street. 

He’d met Jisung a week after moving to South Korea, fresh from Australian soil and unused to speaking Korean all day every day. Jisung had teased him about his choppy-at-best Korean, of course, everyone had, even the teachers, but he was the only one that hadn’t also looked down on and subsequently made Felix feel bad about it. He was also the first and only student to call him Felix. 

“I don’t really get it,” he’d said, after that first week, after sitting next to Felix in each class and smoothly inserting himself into Felix’s space at lunch times, “but my parents always made a point of respecting people’s chosen names. If you want to be called Felix, why not?”

He’d made a point of saying that Felix’s name, Yonbok, was nothing to be embarrassed about. Felix, who’d spent the better part of his childhood being clucked at and called chicken by bullies, had only smiled and insisted on Felix. He wasn’t embarrassed of his Korean name, like his parents thought, he was sure. He just had bad memories associated with it. 

A stray raindrop landed on Felix’s head, and he cursed and tugged at Jisung’s arm, encouraging him into a light jog until they reached the bus stop. It was drizzling by the time they reached the cover, and Felix laughed as Jisung shook his head like a wet dog. 

“Hey, watch out. My clothes aren’t completely soaked yet, and I’d like to keep it that way.”

Jisung tipped his head back, swallowing the last red slush in his ice lolly, before removing the plastic from his mouth and grinning widely at Felix. “What was that? Did you say you felt a bit heated? Did you want some cooling off?”

Laughing and yelling at each other, they chased each other around under the small confines of the bus stop roof. Felix twisted away from Jisung’s grabbing hands, wet with water he had wrung from his hair, when his shoulder bumped into something solid and a grunt sounded behind him. 

Felix quickly spun around to apologise to the other person, hand out to wave off a still incoming Jisung, the apology already tripping out of his mouth before he realised who the person he had bumped into was. 

Hyunjin, a new transfer student, raised one perfectly plucked eyebrow at Felix, flinching backwards when Jisung crashed into Felix’s back, Felix barely keeping himself from tipping over onto Hyunjin. Felix felt Jisung’s chin dig into his shoulder as the other looked to see what the disturbance was. 

“Ah! Hyunjin! Our classmate, our buddy, our  _ pal! _ ” Jisung’s voice was delight personified, and although Felix couldn’t see his face, he could just about imagine the grin plastered on his face. 

See, where Felix had been an anomaly as a transfer student purely because of the fact that he was a foreigner, Hyunjin fit the stereotype of a transfer student almost too perfectly. Like, Kdrama perfectly. Their uniforms were pretty standard; long grey pants, white shirt and tie with school colours, blazer, yet somehow Hyunjin managed to make the clothes look like they belonged on a runway somewhere. 

Hyunjin belonged on a runway somewhere, Felix was pretty sure. Beyond the clothes; a perfect fit in every respect on Hyunjin’s body, he also had flawless skin, hair dyed a light brown that fell perfectly across his face and head no matter which time of the day it was, and piercing eyes that seemed to dismiss you even before you had opened your mouth.

Of course, Jisung being Jisung, he’d taken one look at Hyunjin and the stand-offish way he held himself and he was  _ hooked _ . While Hyunjin went out of his way to ignore Jisung whenever he spoke to him or tried to catch his attention, Jisung went out of  _ his _ way to insert himself into Hyunjin’s interaction sphere at every available opportunity. 

“He’s just  _ too _ perfect, you know,” Jisung had said, leaning against the bleachers with Felix, plucking at the collar of his shirt to encourage the non-existent breeze to cool him off. “No one can just like,  _ naturally _ exist like that. I want to see the  _ real  _ him. I can get him to crack, trust me.”

Felix did, was the thing. Jisung was easily written off by people for being too happy-go-lucky, too stuck in his own head and forgetful to make much of an impact. Felix, however, had seen the determination that Jisung had levelled at video game bosses that refused to be beaten, at lonely people who didn’t know how to make friends (Felix), and the way in which, in four months, after Felix had joined the soccer team, Jisung had gone from never playing a sport in his life to playing first string. Jisung was about as easy-going as a mule when it came to things he put his mind to, and he’d put his mind to Hwang Hyunjin.

Felix was just here to witness the spectacle.

Hyunjin wrinkled his nose a little at the wet mess the two of them presented then turned away from them, pointedly looking another way. Felix stepped back to lean against the bus stand. He had no wish to get between Jisung and his current obsession. Besides, not wanting to study wasn’t the only reason Felix and Jisung had left school early that day. Soccer practise had been rained out and, since he and Jisung were already expected not to be in study hall that day, they’d taken advantage of the situation and skipped. 

Well, Felix had. Jisung talked a big game, but Felix knew he cared about his grades a lot more than he let on, and was probably on his way to some sort of after school study club thing. Not Felix, however. His parents trusted him to pass, and he would, but since the incident last Friday, more than Felix’s personal grudge against school had been distracting him.

He’d found the park a week or two ago. He’d gotten into the habit of taking late night walks, that his parents didn’t know about and wouldn’t approve of, and he’d just turned the corner on a street he could have sworn he’d walked a thousand times before, when he saw it. 

Quiet, isolated, a big, heavy, rusted sign identifying it as a park. Apart from a few plastic wrappers and cigarette butts littering the ground around the entrance, there was no other evidence of human beings in the overgrown lot. A peek around discovered a mostly hidden For Sale sign, discoloured from however many downpours and blisteringly hot sunny days it had sat through. It was private property, then, but since there didn’t seem to be any security or attempt to keep anyone out, not even a rudimentary chain across the entrance, Felix only hesitated for a moment or two before switching on the flashlight on his phone and venturing in. 

He hadn’t found the gazebo the first night. Nor the second, third, or even fourth. In fact, he’d only found it the previous week, having skipped on study hall again and decided that a romp through his favourite new secret would be a good way to spend his afternoon. It had felt like a godsend, finding this isolated, even for this park, place. No parents telling him that he really should start taking school more seriously, this is your last year, we’re only looking out for you. Nothing but the dripping rain and his sketchbook and the feeling of wet grass between his toes and down his shirt when he’d finally given in and walked out in the rain. 

His mother hadn’t been pleased about the state of him when he’d come home that day, but even her disapproving glances and his sister’s rolling eyes at her ‘loser’ big brother couldn’t get him down. He couldn’t  _ wait _ to go back there. Couldn’t wait to feel that peace and serenity and feel cut off from society again. 

And then he’d gone back that Friday. And there’d been that, that boy. Man? It was hard to guess his age, with the way he’d been hunched over, his hair long enough to mostly cover his eyes. He hadn’t been wearing a uniform, so probably not in school. Probably older than he was. Before Felix could make sure, however, before he could do anything other than introduce himself, the guy had… ran away.

“Hey! Hey, Felix.” Fingers snapped in front of Felix’s eyes, and he blinked with a start, looking up to find Jisung with a wide, shit-eating grin on his face, his posture stretching weirdly upward, one arm slung around Hyunjin’s shoulders. A very put-upon and irritated looking Hyunjin, to be fair, but the fact that he was allowing it and not immediately disintegrating Jisung with his withering gaze seemed like progress to Felix. 

“Me and Hyunjin here get off at the same stop, isn’t that cool? It’s like, we were  _ meant _ to be friends, living close to each other like that.” Hyunjin very much looked like he wanted to protest every single word coming from Jisung’s mouth, but there was a tick to Hyunjin’s jaw that Felix recognised from his father as someone who had a lot to say but wouldn’t, and didn’t, because of present company. In his father’s case however, it was usually watching the news and his kids that he didn’t want to yell in front of. Felix could only assume Hyunjin had determined the quickest way to get out of the situation was to play along. 

Felix wished him luck. That’s how he and Jisung had become friends, after all. 

“ _ So  _ cool,” Felix enthused, trying not to grin too visibly at the odd scene in front of him. Judging by Hyunjin’s sneer, he wasn’t very successful. “Anyway, since you have someone to take the bus with you now, you won’t mind me skipping out and walking, would you?”

Jisung’s arm slithered off Hyunjin’s shoulder and Hyunjin took an immediate step back and away from the two of them, turning to reclaim the same position he had been in when Felix and Jisung had barged in on him. “Walking? In this weather?” Jisung blinked around at the rain steadily pouring down around them. “You’ll get sick.”

Felix shrugged, plunging his hands in his blazer pockets. “Nah. I don’t get sick. So, you’re fine, right?”

“Yeah, I guess, but still--”

“Cool.” Felix stepped backward out of the shelter of the bus stop, blinking quickly to keep the water out of his eyes. “See you later then.”

Felix turned to walk away, raising a hand in response to Jisung’s exasperated calls after him. He’ll text him later. Jisung would understand. They’d only been friends for a few months, but after multiple late night gaming sessions and sneaking bottles of soju from Jisung’s father’s mini-fridge, they knew each other. Felix knew that Jisung wasn’t allowed to weigh himself and that his mom bought all his clothes and cut out the tags so Jisung didn’t have to look at the size tags. Jisung knew that Felix sometimes felt too big and too small for his skin all at the same time, and that he just had to  _ move _ sometimes. 

By the time he reached the park, the rain had reduced to a light drizzle, and Felix couldn’t wait to kick off his sloshing shoes and walk barefoot in the grass. Now he just had to find the path again, wacking at the plants encroaching on the path with a stick and… there!

Felix looked up at the gazebo with a smile, and it was only when a choked noise sounded from his right that Felix looked to see the same guy from the last time leaning against the side of the railing, his eyes dark and guarded. 

Felix blew out a breath, clenched his hands into fists in his pockets, and smiled. “Hi. You remember me, right? Felix? I’m afraid I didn’t catch your name last time though.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to turn off anon comments on this cause someone decided it'd be fun to be a dick and insult me. I don't care if you don't like this fic, that's your opinion and you're entitled to it, but like, uh, don't waste your and my time commenting on this then? Find something better to do with your time? Anyway I'm gonna keep updating this cause I actually like this story and am writing it mostly for me. 
> 
> Anyway, this chapter is shorter cause Felix's pov is more of an interlude than an entire chapter on its own. 
> 
> Twitter: [googlyeyes1507](https://twitter.com/googlyeyes1507)

**Author's Note:**

> I have three chapters of this finished and I actually have like, three separate planning documents for this to keep everything straight in my head. This is my baby and I'm so excited to start posting it. I'm going to be doing weekly updates, and if I'm late feel free to pester me on my twitter which I'll link below. Please leave a kudos and let me know what you think if you enjoyed it!
> 
> Twitter: [googlyeyes1507](https://twitter.com/googlyeyes1507)


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